A massive evacuation appeared to help India avoid a big death toll from Cyclone Fani.

Preparedness efforts lessen storm’s impact

DHAKA, Bangladesh — A mammoth preparation exercise that included the evacuation of more than 1 million people appears to have spared India a devastating death toll from one of the biggest storms in decades, though the full extent of the damage was yet to be known, officials said Saturday.

Cyclone Fani packed winds of 155 miles per hour when it made landfall in eastern Odisha state on Friday, equivalent in strength to a Category 4 hurricane, said Mohammad Heidarzadei, an expert on cyclones at Brunel University of London.

India’s National Disaster Response Force director S.N. Pradhan said three people had been killed, though the storm smashed thatched-roof huts, uprooted trees and power lines, ripped the roof off a medical college and sprayed the emptied coastline with debris.

“The precautions that have been taken should be continued,” Pradhan said.

Officials cautioned that the death toll could rise.

Fani crossed over India’s West Bengal state and moved northeast toward Bangladesh on Saturday, weakening from a severe cyclonic storm to a cyclonic storm.

At least a dozen people had been confirmed killed in Bangladesh as the cyclone hovered over the country’s southwestern coast, delivering battering rain storms. Lightning killed at least six people, local newspapers and TV reported.

But the death toll had not increased by Saturday afternoon, suggesting effective preparedness in Bangladesh too.

Bad weather from the storm system was projected to affect around 100 million people in South Asia.

The relatively low casualty count demonstrates much improved disaster readiness in India since 1999, when a “super” cyclone killed around 10,000 people and devastated large parts of Odisha.

“In the event of such a major calamity like this — where Odisha was hit by close to a super-cyclone — instead of being a tragedy of humongous proportion, we are in the process of restoring critical infrastructure. That is the transformation that Odisha has had,” the state’s top government official, Naveen Patnaik, said in a statement.

India’s disaster response agency said authorities were working “on war footing” to restore power and communications and clear roads of debris.

The Associated Press Residents cope Saturday with damage from Cyclone Fani in the fishing village of Puri, in the eastern Indian state of Orissa. The nation appeared to have been spared a devastating death toll.